Saturday, December 28, 2013

The moment the Boxing Day boxes have been returned to their trunk, the true spirit of Christmas departs for another year.

Yes, the tree is still up, and yes, all those images of Santa and his cuddly minions still gaze down from every mantlepiece and window ledge, but gone is the urge to beam and sway to the soft hum of a Canterbury choir — or rampage through the living room to Slade at max volume with a mystery aunt gripped in a half nelson (and your cock out).

The elves, the sleigh, the magic and the anticipation are all gone, and if Christmas TV specials continue to be aired at all, they trumpet bleakly either of has-beens or probably-never-will-bes.

It’s Festive Season R.I.P. for the next couple of days, a ritual gathering of empties and a scrubbling of burst balloons from under armchairs, a time to find dead grandparents behind the sofa and conclude that omitting Hide & Seek from the list of party games was probably not such a good idea after all.

Now, we look ahead to 2014. The fairy lights are our runway, heralding a bright new future like the sliver of light twinkling from behind an ajar door invites maniacs. We toss away our sick bags, prise turkey carcasses from plates, and pluck the fungus from Gramps in good heart: one celebration may be over, but the next is about to begin (only this time, it doesn’t cost zillions of quids in unwanted presents, useless scented candles and excitingly named cheeses so vile not even a rat would touch them).So, gestate ye all with wonder as the year draws its final breaths.Let us gather on the morrow, like gay bums awash with meths.Let the future be ours for the taking.Let the past be remarkably gone.Let our hopes flick flack as acrobatsbefore a horizon scorched by the Sun.

Tuesday, December 24, 2013

My favourite is A Muppet Christmas Carol (mainly because it's alive with wit and the jazziest coloured foam ever), closely followed by the recent Jim Carrey offering. If next year ushers in yet another version featuring Justin Bieber and a pony then no doubt I’ll add that to the roster of Scrooge films that bring a warm glow to my heart every Christmas. Better still, if the leccy goes tits up, there’s always the original book

Why do I like this story?

Because it says great things about humankind. Even if puppets are involved. Whenever we’re truly creative and generous, we’re capable of some pretty fantastic stuff. We stop being cunts to one another and demonstrate a profound capacity for positive change.

I like this story because it’s about the future. It bowls us a chance to recreate the seemingly immutable — and to do so for the best of reasons. I’m heartened that we have had the wit to begin abandoning the harsh world Dickens inhabited. Such a place was never an inevitability, some odd quirk of unquashable nature. We made it up, and we took it apart.

I shall therefore be sparing a thought tomorrow for the thousands of families whose Christmas dinners will be made up largely from odd tins and packs of meat garnered from food banks. An alarming change has taken place here in the UK in recent years. Not only have we become sufficiently mean spirited to permit the acceleration of this retrograde Dickensian lurch but all sense of shame about our newfound absence of moral compass appears to have gone out of the window. Indeed, if we are to believe Work and Pensions Secretary & High Priestess of Drudge, Iain Duncan-Smith, joining up the dots between the biggest ever cuts to social security and the rising numbers of people in need of food banks is “scaremongering”.

I don’t know about you, but I’m more than happy to be scared in this way right now.

Maybe this is the year to drop all the Scrooge stuff and go with a horror film. Making the break from A Muppet Christmas Carol isn’t going to be easy so I figure maybe I’ll run with Frankenstein. The monster is no stranger to a little all-body lime green tint, and in his own sweet way he’s still kind of a puppet. Sure, he rips off a few people’s heads in a way that even Miss Piggy never did, but the guy has a heart underneath it all, and those flashes of lightning over Dr Frankenstein’s castle could look quite festive if juxtaposed with the waft of an apple and cinnamon candle.

Or would Psycho be more apt? Ripping a few heads off is no big deal after all. What makes Psycho truly scary is the villain’s lack of apology or remorse.

Tuesday, December 10, 2013

One question springing like a skimpily-trunked Tom Daley from everyone’s lips right now is when to stick up the Christmas tree?

It’s a tactical move on a par with choices made by football managers in the 75th minute of a critical game: Do I go now with the puppy zest 16 year-old striker, or wait another five minutes? Should I have played him fifteen minutes after half time? Does my new hair clash with this designer tracksuit ‘n’ thigh length pirate boot combo?

Get it wrong, and Juventus romp home to a ten-nil victory. Their fans plunder your home for valuables. Everyone is force fed pasta and Pavarotti for the rest of their lives. And so on.

I’m thinking it’s kind of a tough one this year, the whole tree thing. Last weekend seemed a little to early, yet this coming weekend seems a little too late. In the Christmas tree erection dilemma stakes, truly mankind is as a trio of potentially violent bears testing porridge for optimum heat — only in this case what’s “just right” is probably today, which is clearly ruled out because no-one sticks their tree up on a Tuesday.

Right now, every street in town glows with the half promise of Christmas. Some have gone early while others wait a few more days. Others still may be dead, and only their lack of twinklies come the 28th or 29th will serve to alert oblivious neighbours to their plight and prevent unpleasant scenes later in the Spring involving ambulances, mould and teams of police frogmen.

Monday, December 2, 2013

Sunday, December 1, 2013

Advent is upon us, like an overweight wrestler body splashing his abdominal excess onto the fragile skull of a Kwissmuss wobin.

In the Christian calendar, Advent is a festival to rival Lent or Easter — or the Butt-crack Spatula Attack of July to September favoured by some Catholics and most deranged Branch Davidians — and this year I plan to celebrate the run up to Christmas by running down the concept of goodwill altogether via a series of festivity-themed toons.

Think of it as the equivalent of those great little calendars you used to open up as a kid, with windows full of pictures and chocolates and joy and love and merriment.

Then forget all of that.

You know the score: there will be knob jokes.

Anyhow, to kick off the countdown to the arrival of the fat man (“he who did have every child’s dream in a half Nelson, and more cellulite than a liposuction clinic waste disposal pipe slushing around his bloodstream”), here’s toon #1...

Thursday, November 28, 2013

A wrinkled bag of bear fleshbobbling in the shrubbery of the nightwill exorcise all demons from the fripplitudeand seal the universe’s edges tight‘sif Thor and all accordions had landedin a buggy in the streets of Budeand camel gas rosters of oblivionwere not considered rude. All nonsense, of course — but there’s a point to all of this (unlike Brad Pitt’s ears, which are unduly curvaceous). A while ago I subscribed to an online podcast service called Odiogo. Sounds like a porridge mixture used by medieval assassins, but turns out to be a dinky way of transforming all your blog posts into downloadable or RSS-Feedable mp3 snippets read aloud by a weirdly robotic-sounding electro-American. If memory serves me correctly, I signed up thanks to Odiogo’s cast-iron guarantee that having a WR-SE-A read out your stuff and clog up all your followers’ email inboxes with garbage was a sure-fire (that’s kind of like ‘cast-iron Plus’) way of (and I quote) “driving traffic to your blog”. Clearly, most of this “traffic” drove on immediately to the burger place round the corner. When I pulled the plug on Odiogo, they slipped it back in again with the glee of a sexually habituated cyborg re-inserting a long-lost Gazzum Module.Please May I unsubscribe from your service? No.I’m really not interested in your podcast service right now, please can I unsubscribe? No.Listen, you obstructive fuckers, unsubscribe me NOW before I send in the boys from COPHOUSE CENTRAL!!!” No. Can you see a theme developing here? In the end, I gave up on giving up on Odiogo — until last night. As I trained my flamethrower on my computer, it occurred to me that some of my more recent posts actually kind of work when read aloud by a WR-SE-A. Try this one, for instance (though watch out — it pops up and asks to be saved with the verve of an erect penis before a hooker's pursed lips...). Or maybe this one. Or, for the benefit of rapture-lovers from the twilight kingdom of the bedevilled swamp-moose, this very post in maybe a few days’ time. Cock. Was it Emerson who said, “it pays to have another string to your bow, particularly if you’re a keen archer engaged in top level competition like possibly the Olympics, or a Robin Hood enthusiast keen to rise above the swamp of historical character re-enacters worldwide”? Oh, no — it was me again. Anyhow, go and check them out...

Monday, November 25, 2013

Time now for a bloggerly re-tread — the weblog equivalent of a Band Aid stuck to a floppy Morris Minor’s ailing rubber.

I know I promised Lights! Camera! Action! every Monday and Thursday morning, but the two killer posts residing in my Schedule Bunker are so undeniably killer that they’ve killed each other to death with the venom of a pair of Adrian Mitchell’s metaphorical caged angels (minus the eating part)*. So, I hope that’s clear.

* Hey! Let’s all play Google It!

In order not to disappoint (frustrate, annoy and mis-hula) I’ve unravelled a cotton bobbin and dredged the Abysswinksback swamp for a suitable re-tread post c/o my undeniably brilliant net weaving skills.

So, here once again is the sequel to a famous fairy tale classic, read aloud by one of my previous selves and accompanied by fluffsy cock-ups that prompted an immediate competency regeneration to rival Matt Smith morphing into a spoon. Think of it as a herald of what’s to come very soon: new spoken fiction, vlogs of me in my Snoopy onesie, The Whirl Pro Chef Guide to Cucumber Slicing...

Monday, November 18, 2013

All you need to do is keep your eyes on the screen and unfold the contents of your brain directly into pixels while the fingers take care of themselves.

If you’re like me, however, you have to look at your fingers all the time and make sure every letter on the keyboard is labelled.

Sad to say, but for Whirly Neanderthals, “touch type” refers only to the kind of sneaky pervert who rubs his crotch against women’s backsides on crowded trains.

As my fingers play across the keys in two sets of five little piggies, I’m minded to think that there’s something distinctly fishy about that rhyme I learned back in the days when my heart pounded only for rusks.

Let’s take a look at the evidence.

“This little piggy went to market.”

Right from the outset I’m very concerned about the scenario being suggested here. Why would a piggy go anywhere near a market when those are precisely the kinds of places where bacon, ham and pork proliferate? Hasn’t this piggy seen Babe? If the rhyme began with a little backstory about a magical kingdom called Pigland, where pigs of all shapes and sizes leapt and gambolled 24/7 around a porcine Nirvana, occasionally popping off to the mall for a healthy dose of retail therapy and an accessorizing workout, then it would make a great deal of sense for Piggy #1 to trot off immediately in the direction of the shops. But there is no such backstory! The setting for this finger rhyme is Earth — cruel Earth — whose every second or third building is a death-drenched abattoir bursting at the seams with helpless, pre-mutilated, squealing squealing pigs. What this opening line really says is hey kids, there was this piggy who decided to commit suicide by hot footing it to the abattoir and hurling his hapless pink body into the path of a limb-hacking, head-slicing, gut-mangling chainsaw!!!

Makes the next line very sinister indeed, don’t you think?

“This little piggy stayed at home.”

Now, why would you do that? Stay at home watching TV and stuffing your face with lager and burgers while a fellow piggy makes a beeline for an appointment with self-inflicted doom? Especially if this “fellow piggy” was your mother? You know what I think? This second “little piggy” is a psychopathic hypnotist. He’s already murdered his father in the basement! Pulped his flesh for burgers and turned his urine into lager! And now he’s placed a devil’s hex on his own mother! Sent her away to die in agony! There’s a secret camera in the abattoir, and any minute now, vile images of his mother’s horrific demise will appear in full HD colour before his piggy little eyes!

And so we cut to Piggy #3, who clearly thinks he’s atoning for Piggy #2's sins on behalf of piggykind — but is actually even more of a bastard!

As he sits at his white IKEA dining table, piously eating a luncheon containing zero pig meat, it’s tempting to view him as some kind of saint.

“Oh, sure — I could mash my fellow piggies into burgers or sausages, just like that evil psycho-sadist did with his unfortunate parents. But I’m a nice piggy, a good piggy, and not a hint of bacon or ham or pork will ever pass my lips.”

(He rocks back in his seat — which creaks because, like the table, he didn’t assemble it properly.)

“No — for I consume CATTLE! Steak! Beef! Offal! Eyeballs! All scooped down into my piggy little throat with a big wooden FUKK U ladle! Who needs a penchant for sadism or the loon brain of a psychopath when all it takes to tempt the dumb-as-shit son-of-bitches into the path of a whirling blade is a broomstick and a gate locked securely behind them? When I’ve gorged, gorged, gorged on cow after cow after cow, grown bigger and stronger and tougher than THE HULK, I’m gonna grab that cruel ole Piggy #2 hard and tight round the throat and throttle him till the blood comes squishing from his brain like water from a frickin’ sponge!”

As for Piggy #4, who we’re told had no roast beef at all, please don’t presume he’s any better than the rest of them. Not only is he refusing to eat roast beef or the hacked remains of his fellow piggies — he’s such a selfish wretch that he’s refusing to eat anything. For six whole months prior to the penning of this cutesy finger rhyme, he’s lain in a bare wooden cot, starving himself by refusing all food and water. Pale and emaciated, he sings in his head some words from the rhyme that no child ever gets to hear.

“This little piggy had none. Because he hated his vile and vicious piggy cousins so much that he wanted to wither away and die. But not in a swift and cowardly way like a clifftop plunge or shot to the head with a bazooka. No, this has to be slow and drawn out, has to make a point. With every breath I fight for, wheezing here in my cot, I say gaze upon my suffering. The song I sing is sad and poignant and true. Worse still, I can’t get it to rhyme for shit.”

Count those four fingers now — and count yourself lucky so far. For Piggy #5 — the funny likkul “wee wee wee” pig — is the very worst villain of all.

Remember the lager that Piggy #1 was drinking as he sat watching HD TV footage of his hypnotised mother being hacked to death? The lager distilled from his father’s urine? Where do you think he got the idea for brewing his own beer? Psychopaths, remember, are meticulous in the extreme when it comes to planning and executing a murder. But spooning dried yeast into bottles and vats, and writing out sticky labels with dates on? Are you kidding? The moment he’s clubbed his father over the head with his mother’s ironing board, Piggy #1 got straight on the blower to Piggy #5 and said, “hey, listen — I’ve got this mutilated corpse here with roughly a quart of urine still beached in the bladder. Can you get come over with your siphon and maybe rustle me up some of that tasty wee beer you brew? I’m planning a special party in a few weeks so I need it real quick.”

Naturally, Piggy #5 is straight round the on his moped. He siphons off the urine into a customised rucksack and then heads off home to concoct Piggy #1's special order — along with umpteen orders for other speciality beers sent his way by every other evil piggy in the land.

If you think that’s sinister and weird, don’t forget that we forced those innocent piggies into this. If it hadn’t been for mankind’s desire for smoky bacon crisps, the pigs of this world could have roamed wild and free forever, safe in the knowledge that they would never ever be consumed for their flesh.

As it is, they’ve been driven crazy, made deranged and brutishly nutzoid by our lust for pork and ham — to the point where they’re prepared to mutilate and murder each other in ever more horrific ways and brew up one another’s decanted urine into lager!

So Piggy #5 speeds back home, his beady eyes peering from his steamed-up goggles, probing every abdominal bulge or swelling he sees for evidence of fullness, tell-tale signs of bladders swishy swoshing with unspent wee.

“Wee, wee, wee,” he squeals madly, as the suction pumps and tubing rattle in his moped paniers. All the way home...

Tuesday, November 12, 2013

You know what it’s like when you eat a dodgy meal or accidentally swallow a Swarfega-splattered fish: either you’re blocked up for a week or consumed by the galloping squits.

Irregularity, my friends, is a curse — so to help you get regular in this world of fits and starts, I’m pleased to announce that from this coming Monday, the miracle of writerly advice and fiction snippetry that is the Abysswinksback family friendly blog* will once again beat to a continuous rhythm rather than evidencing the haphazard spazz-on randomness witnessed over the past few months.

* was that a fanfare or did someone just strangle a duck?

For the whole of next week, from Monday to Friday, there will be singalong excerpts of some of my favourite posts, all mirrored on Twitter like a quintet of acrobats sporting leotards complete with reinforced crotch fabric.

From then on, I shall endeavour to post at 9.59am every Monday and Thursday, tossing in occasional extras over the festive season with the casual deftness of a cruel god dispensing bonus lions before a writhing gladiatorial ensemble.

Who said life was fair?

DisclaimerAbysswinksback does not represent or warrant the accuracy or reliability of any of the information or content (collectively, the "Materials") contained on, distributed through, or linked, downloaded or accessed from any of the services contained on this website (the "Service"). In other words, if any of these promised blog posts fail to put in an appearance then it probably means that I’ve accidentally swallowed a Swarfega-splattered fish and shat myself senseless.

But here’s how it actually went:

Sadly, I reckoned without the AUTOPOST, BECAUSE WE CAN feature buried deeper beneath the Audioboo hub than foulness, evil and despicabilitude grace the tips of every devil’s tits.

Instead of the steady drip-drip-dripping of Whirltastic vox posts I’d intended for next week, I’ve ended up with a flying cream shot of audio treats schwamangled into a single glitzwhack of Twitter mayhem.

Worse still, it’s all over. The moment (like Andrew Neil’s real hair colour) is now all gone, all over.

Best I can do is break out the tadpole-friendly voca-scoop and redeploy my sound files here. It’s all old stuff from the blog, only read aloud. So here goes:

Enjoy them if you can (or must), and don’t forget to return here on Monday for the sake of regularity. As for Thursday — fock that focker for this week (unless hamster debutantes flood my study with their ‘photo-me’ whiskers akimbo...)

Monday, November 11, 2013

As the wind howled, I could almost see my face in the whirlochre spin of dried leaves fluttering about the place, and the whole season passed without Ringo Starr releasing a single DVD box set of his favourite masturbation techniques.

But now it’s Winter’s turn to enthrob our weatherly wobb.

I never much like Winter as a kid — there’s something about being trapped inside a freezing, sopping wet, snorkel parka that stays with you foreverer than the drip-drip-dripping sound 15 minutes after Mr Creosote’s corpse was dragged from the restaurant (particularly if you have a swollen bladder and a mile left to walk home from school) — but now I’ve reached the age where my bones should recoil from the cold like an erection of Mercury in a thermometer, I find myself being rather partial to its bleak and frosty charms.

Thanks to Winter I can throw on a hat and an overcoat and gad about the place with zero chance of bumping into some grinning, tanned twat in Bermuda shorts or slipping over on a half-slurped Magnum. Plus, if I’m involved in any kind of accident and the paramedics have to strip me down to my socks, no one will consider it at all odd that I’m wearing two pairs of underpants. Can’t get away with that one in the Summer!

Friday, November 1, 2013

Change is a many-splendored thong, slipping itself so snugly over your bits one day only to reveal rather more of your hirsute danglitude the next.

We love change, but sometimes we hate it.

Was it Isaac Newton who said, “in a world of constants, the fickle is our inspiration, our irritant, our demise”? No, I think it was me.

I suppose the idea of change appeals most when we’re in the driving seat of the morphologimobile (with our thongs tucked away in the boot, ready to be sprung). We choose this thing or that thing or the other thing to pursue or alter, and use the keys of our wherewithal to evidence our fancy. Our only limitations are our imagination and the skills we can bring to bear on our material assets — which is why, very often, the only changes we make are in the hairdo or GET RID OF THAT ANNOYING FLY department. It’s as if we kind of imagine the wrong kind of imagination sometimes.

However, mis-imagining (or under-imagining, or quasi-imagining, or whatever term you wish to apply to that mad urge to mess with God’s perfect creations that resolves itself only into an act of fruitless vandalism — like maybe you turn all of your thongs into a quilt and superglue yourself a cranium-only afro) is far preferable to being party to that other form of change, namely “Circumstances Bearing On Down From Without Which Move Right The Hell On In”.

Such changes are resource stealers. You may still have firings of all manner of imagination but if your material assets are in a state of flux (erring on the side of All Thinges Reduced) then there is littler to be done, all of which impinges upon your capacity to spring home-grown change (from the boot of your morphomologimobile where, up until very recently, you hid away thongs and knitting patterns for quilts and caterpillar afro wigs) á la voila.

There are billions more people in the world than there are of you, many of whom have more than enough power to compel your thong-depleted vehicle of change into the long grass. Some do this deliberately; others are just driving about like idiots. Either way, Titsupness abounds and it can scupper the best-laid plans and de-orbit all the plan-generating whizzy brainy atomy particles necessary for cerebral juggling.

I flip the comm-hub over and indicate the specs on the rear panel. “Look, see — A53. It’s got the genuine Commtech Hubware digital seal, light-up serial number and signal boost upgrade code.”

“So how come it looks like an A52? I coulda sworn—”

Outside the bunker, bombs rain down; the poisoned air shakes with screams.

I tip back my head and laugh. “It’s a mod. Like, kinda retro. I dunno, maybe it’s just me, but I kinda liked the look and feel of the A52. It’s chunkier, more authentic. Plus, I don’t like the buttons on the A53.”

“You kidding?” Jed slips off his gauntlet and digs inside his pocket for his comm-hub. “How can you not like buttons like these babies? They’ve got a real smooth action, and the rounded edges give them an arty look, like it’s a music player or wAnkaida.”

A loud blast bowls us onto our backs.

“The buttons are precisely what put me off the A53.” I cup my bleeding forehead, watch the scarlet droplets kiss the bunker’s acid-ravaged floor. “It’s like some designer guy has said hey let’s see if I can figure a way to make the buttons on this device look like they’ve been ported in from some other piece of tech — and then gone and sourced the absolute worst kind of buttons he can lay his hands on.”

“I disagree on two points there.” Jed pulls off his protec-goggs and scowls right at me. “First, there’s no way any tech company would ever employ a designer with that kind of mindset. The scenario you envisage is just insubordination gone crazy.”

“The designer might be freelance. That would explain how he could go source any buttons he wants.”

Clods of shrapnel machete the bunker portal.

“Point taken. But why would he deliberately source the worst buttons? You’re mixing up this guy’s personal values of cosmetic taste and whatnot with preferences of your own.”

Instinctively, I key my wife’s holo-specs into my comm-hub. “With all due respect, Sir, I think you’re mistaken. Look how easy this thing is to use. I’m gliding here.”

“It’s no better than mine, pal.” Jed’s fingers beat down hard on his cherished comm-hub buttons. “I can get any number, any contact, quick as a flash.”

“What is it, Sam? I’m busy in the hypergalactomarket right now.” Even on a tiny screen, my wife looks beautiful as ever.

“Hey, it’s nothin’, hon. I was just debatin’ a moot point with Jed is all.”

“Hell, Sam, if it’s nothing, why in blazes did you call me?”

Jed grabs my comm-hub. “Heya Suzy. Listen, maybe you can help us out here. Your butt-head of a husband has an issue with the buttons on theA53. Says they’re real crap an’ all whereas I say they’re real arty. You got a take on this?”

Lights flash on Jed’s comm-hub. “Hi there. A34-62b Pizzas. How can I help you today?”

“You can’t, right now,” says Jed, slapping a palm to his forehead. “We’re right in the middle of shit, but thanks for your call.”

I grab Jed’s shoulder. “Don’t hang up just yet. Maybe we should get some food ported in for when this is all over.”

“Yeah,” says Suzy. “If you can get a decent lunch then that will save me cooking a big meal later.”

I F - Y O U - C A N - G E T - A - D E C E N T - L U N CH

Jed recoils from the stomp of the Exterminato-bot’s spiked boot. “Lucky we’re fixing this on my comm-hub. Keying in our location with your goddamn retro buttons would take an age.”

My brain kicks into gear. “Wait. If we both order pizzas at the same time, you on your comm-hub, me on mine, then we’ll have the objective proof we need to settle the argument once and for all.”

“Shucks,” says Suzy. “I guess it’s goodbye then?”

“Till later, hon, I guess.”

“Before I go, what kind of pizza are you guys ordering in? If it’s salami and cheese, there’s no point me fixing up salami and cheese for dinner later. Hold on. Waitaminute—”

I peer hard at my comm-hub’s hi-rez screen. “What is it?”

“They have cheese on special offer. Two for one. The stuff you like. So I’m thinking maybe don’t go for Four Cheese or Goat’s Cheese or anything like that.”

D O N T - G O - F O R - G O A T S - C H E E S E

Jed’s severed head cannonballs into the portal ceiling.

“Just give me a second, hon. I gotta think about all the carbs here.”

Lights flash on Jed’s comm-hub. “Are you guys done ordering yet? So far I’m taking for two Salami & Cheese, one Goat’s Cheese and two Four Cheese. And can I just check what you mean by AAAAUUUUUGGGHHHH? Is that a new brand of mayo or am I swiping alien plastic?”

“Nope. Just my commander’s head flying off.”

“Is he pissed with you again?” says Suzy. “Sounded real fired up about the A53 deal, like he had a chip on his shoulder about it or something.”

“No kiddin’.” I cup both comm-hubs in my hands. “It’s plain as day to me that my modded, chunky A52 style buttons are way easier to use than Jed’s rounded A53 efforts.”

“What do you think?” says Suzy. “Is it worth ordering four pizzas while you have the guy online? Two for you and Jed, and two more for dinner later while we take in a show?”

A squirt of blood squishes in my eye from Jed’s pulsating neck wound. “No hon, Jed really has had his head ripped off.”

My comm-hub falls silent for a moment as Suzy puts on her thinking face. “Ok, then go with three,” she says, and flashes her eyes at the pizza guy. “Any special offers on threesomes?”

A N Y - S P E C I AL - O F F E R S - O N - T H R E E S O M E S

The pizza guy blushes. “Not today, madam.” He adjusts his spotted dickie bow tie and gazes up at me. “If I might be so impertinent, I have an observation to make about your comm-hub issue.”

My eyebrows prick up. “Shoot.”

“Are you right- or left-handed, Sir?

“That’s not a question that really applies to me—”

“Well, here’s the thing. You appear to have your own comm-hub in your favoured hand, while I’m sitting here in your left, all of which sorta gives your modded A52 buttons something of an unfair advantage in the hand-eye co-ordination department.”

“Hey, watch your mouth, kid!” My wife’s face flares red. “I’ll have you know my husband is hooked up with the most elite gook-bustin’ space commando troop this side of the Marveducci Sun! You don’t get anywhere near that level if’n one of your hands is less good than the other! My husband is as ambidextrous as it’s possible to be without cyborg-enhancements, which, for the record, son, he’s too proud to have fitted to his limbs — all of which he was about to tell you before you butted the hell on in.”

“Ok, my bad,” says the pizza guy. “Run the test then maybe we can fix you up with some pizzas. On the house.

Mr space commando guy?”

“He has a NAME, kid.”

“Sorry. Madam. Make that double free pizzas.”

“Sam, what do you think? Are we going Four or Goat or what?”

“Yeah. I could sure do with taking your order right now. We got a long queue outside the Thru-U-Airzippa Port.”

“Sam? Sam? Where in hell are you, Sam?”

“Hope you don’t mind me butting in again, madam, but if memory serves me correctly, one of the bugaboos with modding an A53 — particularly either the main console or the external input interface — is that sometimes the signals can get re-routed via an out-planet server. When that happens, one of two things can glitch out. First, the battery runs down real quick and the onboard chip initiates a shut-down of non-essential information and services, which might explain the loss of signal from your husband’s in-helm vox-o-pod. However, my guess is that’s not the case because there’s been no fizzing sound — which is what you normally hear when your battery’s just about to die. So I’m figuring it’s scenario two: a mechanical fault involving one or more of your husband’s modded buttons that has alerted the onboard security bot to a possible unauthorised user scenario and booted the whole comm-hub down as a precautionary measure. It’s essentially the same effect as a battery failure, only without the fizzing sound.”

“I hear what you’re saying, but the comm-hubs issued by the military don’t work in quite the same way as their civilian counterparts, as I’m sure Sam will confirm when he resets the rear panel emergency security scenario console flipper switch array. If there’s any kind of security breach, any half decent A-series comm-hub self-destructs rather than booting down.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah. Like the fizzing sound you say precedes a battery failure, the security breach software emits a beep before it releases the acid from the comm-hub rescue vault. Sam showed me once. Hell, I’ll never forget it — he damn near ruined the tiles in our conservatory. It’s a beep beep, a kinda beep beep beep — a real funny sound, I just can’t get it.”

“Hey, that’s weird. Sounds like the beep we get here on the lock doors over the refuse disposal hangar. Weird thing is, the system is made by the same people who rig the A-series comm-hubs. I was down there the other day when the alarm went off. Kinda like a beep beep beep. Like a beep beep beep. Hell, that’s so hard to do.”

“That second beep, do you mean like a beep beep or a beep beep?”

“Hmm. I don’t think it’s either one. It’s more like a beep beep.”

“Again?”

“Like a beep beep.”

“Hmm. No. Go with the first one again.”

“Like a beep beep.”

“No, you’ve changed it.”

“ (cough) Ok. Sorry. Like a beep beep?”

“Hmm. Now I’m getting real confused. I didn’t hear a beep beep anyways. So are you sure it’s a security breach? Maybe there’s a third option.”

“Maybe, but can you hold on for a second, madam. I have a guy here needs to order and he’s getting kinda flustered.”

“Okay, no problem.”

“Sorry for the delay, Sir. We’re kinda busy tonight. What can I get you?”

“Huh, lemme see. Can I get a twelve inch tuna & chilli, a couple garlic breads, a small tub of Virvidian Weasel Pee, and maybe some fries?”

“Hey, pizza guy. Can you turn your volume down for a second? I’m picking up everything your customer is saying.”

“Hell, lady. I been listening in to you two for the past five minutes. But here’s the thing — maybe I can help out here. I’m a tech guy. Can I take this comm-hub while you fix the pizzas, son?”

“Hey, go right ahead, Sir.”

“Okay, name’s Bob.”

“Pleased to meet you Bob. I’m Suzy.”

“And I’m Quentin.”

“D’ya hear that, Suzy?”

“Sure.”

“Okay, so Quentin’s comm-hub is picking him up from five feet away because he has the volume boost maxed out — for your music, right?”

“Yes, Sir.”

“Whereas, your problem over there is that you can’t pick up your husband’s in-helm vox-o-pod because we’ve figured there’s a glitch with his modded A53, maybe a battery failure or a security issue, right?”

“Right.”

“What kind of comm-hub are you using?”

“It’s an A51 my husband modded before he modded the A53.”

“Okay. Do you know what mods he modded? If it’s buttons or screen there’s no problem, but if he’s messed with the insides then it may be that the problem is coming from your end rather than the modded A53.”

“Excuse me, Sir, but did you say twelve inch or ten inch for the tuna & chilli pizza?”

“Twelve, please.”

“Thank you, Sir.”

“Maybe he did mess with the insides, I dunno. What I can tell you for sure is that the buttons and screen look perfectly normal. They have the same real round edges Sam hated on the A52, though of course, the screen is a couple of millimetres wider.”

“Okay, so we’re looking for the volume boost maxer option. The volume is set real low on an A51 to filter out background noise, so maybe if you adjust the factory settings we can crank it up and get a handle on your husband’s signal.”

“Got it. Which menu screen do I use? Settings or Options?”

“If you go into Settings and scroll down, you’ll see a box called Volume Boost Maxer. Click on that and boost the slider to max.”

“Okay...I got Settings, but no Volume Boost Maxer.”

“You sure?”

“Sure I’m sure.”

“That’s okay, we can fix this the back way via Options.”

“Here’s your order, Sir. That’ll be five hundred creds.”

“Okay, here’s my card. Listen up, Suzy, I gotta go real soon. Quentin needs his comm-hub back and if I stay here at the head of the queue any longer, the guys behind me are gonna go berserkoid. Maybe if we swap numbers I can call you back in five minutes and we can get this sorted?”

“Make it ten. I’m almost at the checkout here in Galacti-bargzz. Once I’m done I can take your call in my Airzippa.”

“Any chance you can wait outside?”

“Why so?”

“I’m running a C87 here and the off-world tech guys are involved in a whole bunch of industrial action. It’s been a nightmare day tryin’ to keep pace with the disruption on the network, particularly with signal uploads to the comm consoles in light family hoppers like the Airzippa. We can try it, but I don’t think my signal will make it through today.”

“Okay, I’ll wait outside. Call me in ten.”

“See ya.”

“Thanks, Quentin.”

“Have a nice day. Hope it all works out.”

“It will. Between you and me, I figure the problem lies with the lady's modded A51. If she can’t get Volume Boost Max from Settings then it means she’s running Commtech version 2.45, which never shipped with the early A51s. If she has an early A51 and it’s been modded—”

Sunday, October 13, 2013

Over the past few days I’ve alluded — via tweets and Facebook comments and virtual custard splats flicked onto the backs of the spreadeagled dachshunds over at U-angst-on-eDog-GO.org.jp — to the concept of Throttle An Imbecile Week.

Naturally, this was a joke — only I now find, super-post-hyper-subsequently naturally, that I MEANT IT.

I’m truly sick of all the imbeciles in my life!

You there, with the ludicrous nylon poncho, dreaming of becoming a have-a-go hero c/o some spazzmo random event! Get the heck out of my way in the new unisex lavatory facilities at Birmingham New St station when all you want to do is ponce with your semi-prehensile sub-mohican and I’M BIRTHING A DOLPHIN-CHIHUAHUA HYBRID!

And you, Mr New Shoes! Ticky tackying along the street in your ticky tacky new shoes WHEN I’M LYING PRONE, PRACTICING HARD TO BECOME THE FINAL MEMBER OF THE 120-STRONG UK 2016 OLYMPIC SYNCHRONISED PERISTALSIS TEAM!

As for you, Woman With A Third Of A Fag On, Staring Into Space On A Park Bench Twixt Infinite Dimensions To Which You Will Be Forever Blind, can you please either:

a) Dock the Berkeley b) Be sucked into oblivion or c) Tie Mr Ludicrous Poncho to Mr New Shoes, suffocate both with a bin liner, then DIE.

Can’t you see I need that bench to help me rehearse my forthcoming cameo role as Mickey The Particularly Leaky Spaniel in the spontaneous urination scene of Gilbert & Sullivan’s HMS Pinafore at my local theatre this coming November?

Grrr! All of you are such IMBECILES!

Living your lives with the laissez-faire, “don’t mind me Jack”, coccoonified insularity of a wasp-detecting cyberbot given free rein to zip and zop about the corridors and holds of some vast intergalactic trading vessel in search of insects capable of wrecking the ventilation system and plunging the zillion onboard inhabitants to their doom — and doing so when most of your fellow men aren’t even called Jack, especially the girl men!!!

So, are you with me on this one, people?

Are you ready to make next week THROTTLE AN IMBECILE WEEK? To offer those dunderhead creeps not a single shred of mercy?

If you’re game, let’s make a start at 8am GMT on Monday morning. I’m ironing my throttling gauntlets RIGHT NOW in preparation, and will leave the comments trail open for a week for stories, comments, links to photographs of the recently throttled — and maybe even the glut of spam that regularly masquerades as a loyal follower base.

Monday, September 16, 2013

Mont: Hell, I don’t know what it is, Hal, but I’m not in the right place right now. Every time I set aside some time to sit down and write it’s like I’m setting down some time not to write, which is crazy because that’s what I’m doing all the time.

Hal: Yeah, sometimes you just end up in the wrong place, I suppose.

Mont: Hey, I never said I was in the wrong place, just not the right place.

Hal: But you kind of inferred it. And that’s how it is with writing, for me. I’m either writing or not writing. There’s no grey, no fuzzy, no in-between.

Mont: You want my opinion? I think that’s just a crime writer thing. Everything in black and white. Right/wrong, either/or — works for the genre I suppose.

Hal: Quit confusing me with my genre, willya? What you say about crime writing is true — it’s very clinical in those either/or terms — but I’m a regular guy, and to assume the lack of fuzziness regarding my craft either reflects upon, or dictates, my personality or my character or my soul — or whatever aspect of me you wanna discuss — well that’s just crazy.

Mont: So you’re saying you’re not fuzzy right now? If you have writer’s block you gotta be fuzzy as hell. That’s the whole problem, surely?

Hal: Said Mr Fuzzy Guy Fuckin’ Central.

Mont: Whaaat?

Hal: You gotta admit, fantasy kind of lends itself to fuzziness, and I wonder sometimes if you’re not just making it all up about your writer’s block, like you’ve written a Tolkienesque trilogy and you’re just keeping it under your hat, playing like you have writer’s block so you can surprise me three months down the line when Iain Banks’ agent takes you on as the new Iain Banks.

Mont: So you’re saying fantasy is crap?

Hal: I’m saying fantasy is a shedload easier to make up than crime writing, and when it comes to writer’s block, you know shit all about it.

Mont: The hell I do! Remember the script I showed you last autumn?

Hal: The dwarves in the flying longboat?

Mont: Exactly. I took your crits onboard, and revised the whole section with the dragon — remember the dragon?

Hal: How could I forget the dragon...?

Mont: Exactly. So I got five hundred words in and dried up. Couldn’t figure what the hell to do.

Hal: Your point being?

Mont: My point being that I had writer’s frickin’ block!

Hal: No you didn’t. You just couldn’t be bothered to follow my suggestions about losing the dragon.

Mont: The dragon made the scene!

Hal: Or the longboat.

Mont: How in hell are the dwarves going to fly to the promised land without their friggin’ longboat?

Saturday, September 7, 2013

It’s well known in most quality writing circles (and even one or two of the stinkers) that opening your novel or short story with a passage about the weather is a klutz of a boob of an error from Planet No-no.

Consider this novel opening:

James looked up at the Sun. Its warm July rays beat down on his skin, tanning it to the human flesh equivalent of a size 8 gentleman’s brogue. “Isn’t it hot?” his sister ejaculated. “Oh, yes, it is,” observed James as he leafed through a Christmas card catalogue while mowing the lawn and eating a cheese sandwich which his elderly grandmother had made him only a few hours earlier before she was taken to the hospital after a cycling accident. A solitary cloud floated over the apple tree. “Maybe we’ll have rain later,” intoned Jane, James’ sister. “That would be a great pity because I’d like to sunbathe naked for a few hours.” “The weatherman said there might be rain,” chuckled James, tucking into a strawberry and cream flavoured yoghurt. “But I don’t remember his name. Oh, wait a minute, it was Alan.”

It’s all exciting stuff, and more potential plot twists are hinted at here than in the first few minutes of any of the recent Batman films. The problem is that all the business of the weather acts as a major distraction from the action.

But look what happens when all reference to the weather is edited out...

James’ skin was like the human flesh equivalent of a size 8 gentleman’s brogue. [Weird, isn’t it?] His sister ejaculated as he leafed through a Christmas card catalogue while mowing the lawn and eating a cheese sandwich which his elderly grandmother had made him only a few hours earlier before she was taken to the hospital after a cycling accident. [OK, I admit — this section is still pretty good] James tucked in to a strawberry and cream flavoured yogurt.

Everything seems kind of meaningless now. The weather helped to set the original scene, and without it our intrepid heroes are lost in an unappealing cardboard limbo.

But there’s a way round this dilemma — a cunning way, a way that will have literary agents and publishers lapping up your writing like cats with milk or cat-eating pandas with cats with milk.

I call it the Slip The Weather In Gently Like A Banana Between The Thighs Of Queen Elizabeth II And The Duke Of Edinburgh As They Flounce Down The Mall In An Open Carriage Technique.

Here it is in action:

A warm July glow leapt from James’ skin like the tanned leather of a gentleman’s size 8 brogue. [Notice the subtlety here? It’s killer.] His sister crossed the patio, sweating. “I could do with being locked in a fridge for a week,” she ejaculated, sweating again. [Notice how I’m ladling in the effects of the weather here rather than pointing it up gratuitously? It’s a technique called “Showing, Not Telling”, and it’s an indispensable tool for generating quality fiction — apart from when you need to lie to the police after exposing your genitals in a supermarket.] “My, you’re really sweating today,” observed James as he leafed through a Christmas card catalogue while mowing the lawn and eating a cheese sandwich which his elderly grandmother had made him only a few hours earlier before she was taken to the hospital after a cycling accident. [Classic lines like this never, ever need editing.] “I’m Jane,” intoned Jane, “and I’m your sister.” She took off her bikini and flopped onto the patio. “I could still use a fridge, but maybe not quite so much now that I’m in the buff.” James tucked into a strawberry and cream flavoured yogurt. “I’m just going to the kitchen to get some plastic carrier bags and cling film,” he chuckled. “Then I’ll visit the shed and pick up some bamboo canes. After that I’m going to construct a kind of waterproof gazebo for you because I have every reason to believe you may need it later on this afternoon, thanks to a guy called Alan.” [There’s room for trimming here, but you get the idea.]

Take a look at that passage again. All the storytelling, mood and scene setting elements of the weather are included — yet not once has any direct reference been made to the Sun.

I guarantee that if you use my Slip The Weather In Gently Like A Banana Between The Thighs Of Queen Elizabeth II And The Duke Of Edinburgh As They Flounce Down The Mall In An Open Carriage Technique, your fiction will glow like the work of a genius.

Reproduce the key parts of the court transcript in which arguments were made for who should get Richard III's remains, and why.

And from this blog’s most stalwart supporter, Fairyhedgehog, came this:

You need serious kitten therapy; you should research LOLcats and DailySquee and other cute websites with kittens and your next post should be about why kitten pictures are an essential part of anyone's internetting routine.

In a dingy courtroom midway between York and Leicester (albeit c/o an impossibly isoscelesy triangle whose narrowest point pricks at the rings of Saturn..........ha, only joking — we’re right here on terra firma in WORKSOP), crowds gather to witness the fate of England’s last Plantagenet king, Richard “Played by Olivier like a bent saxophone, no less” III.

Some want him buried in Leicester, the place where he fell in battle; others want his remains interred in his birthplace, the city of York (that’s Richard III, not Larry, of course — said Icon of Thesp’s ashes are buried deep within Dame Helen Mirren’s left breast).

Strange as it may seem, the battle for his remains is turning out to be a bloodier spectacle than his original fight to remain alive on Bosworth Field in 1485...Judge LOLBigScrotum prises his whiskery Manxness from between the polished aluminium flaps of a portable document scanner, pleased to have won 3rd prize in the latest Pets 4 Geeks “Scan Your Cat’s Genitals” competition.

The crowds gasp. “My, what an unfortunate kitty! That scrotum is the size of a beach ball!”

Judge: Silence in court! I will not have my supreme LOLcatness mocked during a trial of such historically significant proportions!

In the gallery, rival groups of the dead king’s supporters trade blows, outstripping the Confederates and the Unionists in their zeal for a punch-up featuring plenty of ludicrous hats, making a mockery of the heartfelt beliefs of crusading Christians and Moors, and pooh-poohing the whole 90s Brit Pop “Oasis vs Blur” shebang like it was a fake showdown between Britney Spears and Kerry Katona dreamed up by the intravenous antidepressant drug industry.

First to plead its case is the York contingent — in the form of Betsy Thripplethwaite-Thripplethwaite-Thripplethwaite (great-grand-daughter, twice removed, thrice operated upon for varicose veins, and four times winner of the annual Doncaster “Looks Like No-one In Particular” Competition), accompanied by an interpreter multitasking on 3 separate dialect-translating laptops from the comfort of a custom-built info-papoose.

Betsy: It’s only right and proper that our good king should be buried in the place where he was born. Back home, alongside the bones of his family and friends, the poor old soul can rest in peace without the echoes of Bosworth Field — the anguished cries of brutally wounded men, the yelps of cruelly dismembered horses — ringing in his ears. Plus, takings are down at the York Minster tourist centre shop and it’s traditionally rough up North, so we could do with the few extra bob that would be generated by having a dead King mounted in a glass cabinet.

In the gallery, the Leicester supporters engage in a fierce charge against their Northern opponents using a ten foot Walker’s Crisps promotional Gary Lineker inflatable as a battering ram.

Judge: *sighs* Why do I always bag the difficult legal cases? Back in Paw Law School, I had every intention of seeing out my days trying unscrupulous vets for miscellaneous mis-neutering misdeeds. Now I find myself at the centre of a pointless historical charade — and all because some dead King’s remains were dug up in a Leicester car park!Interpreter: Fancy a comforting haiku? I can rustle one up for a tenner if it would help ease the agony of being a frustrated scrotal treasure lost in a throng of warring monarch fanatics.

Judge: Oh, would you?

A burst Gary Lineker flick flacks through the air like an anorexic 70s Russian gymnast as the York supporters load the gallery with catapults primed to fire oversized Tetley tea bags.

Interpreter: Your bag is giant / your laws compliant, and you / are a great Manx...cat.

As tea bags fly from the gallery and the Leicester contingent prepares to quote from the plays of Joe Orton and the songs of Showaddywaddyat the same time, Sir Richard Attenborough glides into the courtroom on an enormous jet-powered cushion, looking every bit the veteran director-cum-actor-cum-brother-to-a-famous-naturalist ponce.

Sir Richard Darlings, darlings, darlings! We simply can’t permit our good King’s lovingly unburied remains to be stolen from the place where he fell. It’s so disrespectful of the dead, treating their decayed bones like dog poop scooped away and binned in a scented bag. However, in pleading for Richard III to remain here in Leicester, I echo the points raised by the hump-backed midget woman with the rotten teeth—Betsy Hey! That’s discriminatory and offensive!Sir Richard produces a two pint tot of whiskey from a secret flap in his Jurassic Park T shirt and quaffs till its River Kwai bridge shaped pewter is sucked dry of liquid.Sir Richard: Oi! I’m honorary president of MENCAP, missus! There’s nothing I don’t know about being fucking discriminatory and offensive! But to continue my point, let’s face it, Leicester is a cultural fucking desert compared to York, and we need every bit of help we can get. Compared to York Minster and all those bloody other churches, and those bishops and saints and all that shit, Englebert Humperdinck and Brucciani’s coffee shop are a slap-in-the-teeth pile of stinking mutton-dressed-as-lamb wrapped up in a fucking waste-of-space charade! Especially on a bloody Sunday and that fucking Eurovision crap!Judge: Guards! Kindly escort this inebriated star of stage and screen from the courtroom!Interpreter: It’s 2013 / not 1485, mate: / there ain’t no guards here.Judge: How are you with a bent old gavel?Interpreter: My sexuality is none of your business, good sir.Judge: OK, then just twat him one with whatever you can lay your hands on.The interpreter leaps from his papoose, another projectile in the raging aerial battle between the tea bags of York and Leicester’s Parker pen nib onslaught. Judge LOLBigScrotum raps his most misshapen testicle with his gavelJudge: Right, you frenzied and possibly deluded tossers — I’ve made up my mind on this one.A hush descends on the courtroom — like icing sugar sprinkled on a cinnamon muffin, a burst balloon flopping onto the head of a donkey like a weird swimming hat. Two photographers from DailySquee battle it out for the perfect shot using 33 megapixel cameras in the shape of cheeseburgaz.Judge: On reflection, I have to side with Leicester. When you’re a young city trying to make its way in the world alongside historical heavyweights like York and Cairo and the suburbs of Kaniapiskau, you need more than being famous for pale orange cheese that tastes like soap and B-list celebrities like Biddy Baxter and Graham Chapman—Voice from the gallery: Hey! Chapman was A-list, surely? No way is a Python playing Jesus any kind of B or C!Another voice from the gallery: And don’t forget Una Stubbs and Gok Wan! Or the Elephant Man or Rosemary Conley! I lost an incredible 22lbs off my hips by following one of her diets!Judge: Hey! I’m on your side, okay? I vote we give Leicester a leg up in the world by allowing it to keep its dead king. In a hundred years time, the world will thank us — even if we’re all speaking Chinese by then and genetically incapable of pronouncing Leicester.Random dancing girls flood the courtroom, their frenzied can-cans signalling a kind of terpsichorian bye for now, folks while chaos and Jackie Chan back flip kicks maraud their way into life all around...